Im running a group which has a greatbow Ranger, an earthstrength Warden and a pursuit Avenger.

The Avenger doesn't do the damage of the Ranger, and must put himself in the melee mix, which means that anything thats a threat to the Warden is vety dangerous to him.

The player is unhappy that he feels at he has to sacrifice "style" choices in order to min/max and compete.

I am seeking suggestions on how I can carve out a combat niche for him. I suppose I could start adding more spellcasters as NPCs since his reflex and will are very high. And maybe I can poke the Rangers eyes out with a stick.

First, he needs to accept that he will NEVER match the ranger without being a ranger himself.

That done, need some more details about this erstwhile Chaser. Is he deadset on a specific deity? How does he define "style"? Remind him, maybe, to get himself a decent OA and use his Oath on spellcasters or ranged attackers that he should then get adjacent to? Overwhelming Strike+Power of Darkness also works for getting Brutes to go pick on someone else.

Avengers are more about accuracy than dealing tons of damage in one attack, which is why they get OoE instead of extra damage like Hunter's Quarry or Sneak Attack. That's just a fact. The idea is that if you hit more often you don't have to do so much damage each time, but I don't know if it always works out that way.

They also happen to get slightly more hit points, healing surges, and generally better AC, especially if you take Improved Armor of Faith, not to mention class bonus to all your non-AC defenses. They are a weird sort of middle ground between defender and striker. It's more in their movement abilities that they resemble a Striker rather than how they trade hit points. In most other ways they are a little more Defender than Striker.

If the Avenger is a human, I'd highly recommend Action Surge as a Feat. Since you only get your OoE reroll once per round, having the +3 to your extra attack is awesome. In my experience, action points can be as disappointing as they are exciting, but if you use your reroll on an encounter then spend the action point and throw a daily with a +3 to attack you've got a reasonably high chance of landing both for a substantial nova combo. An Action Point with an Avenger can be super awesome with Action Surge.

I also feel very strongly that if you don't take Aspect of Might as your level 1 Daily then you are really selling yourself short. +2 speed combined with many, many, movement based attacks makes Avengers very fast. +2 damage is also very good, and if you are the kind of DM that likes to include skill check and challenges in your encounters than that +5 to athletics is killer.

In the Divine power book there are domain feats available. The power of skill domain feat is awesome for Avengers, giving them a +1 bonus to all trained skill checks and allowing the use of Overwhelming Strike as a melee basic attack.

Of course, at that point you do start to see that Avengers need to be min/maxed a lot more than some other classes. Once you start arguing must-have-feats a class really starts to become limited. But even still, I like Avengers a lot for the aesthetic, the role-playing quality of the class. I think of them like Batman, but fanatically religious. So I like to emphasize skills and focus on RP rather than combat. Though I think the advice above does make for a solid combat character.

A central pillar of the campaign revolves around his character's previous deific ties stripped and forcibly re-directed to a nature-based diety, so his Domain access is somewhat limited.

He took Renewing Strike because he kept running out of range for the healer and doesn't want to get too near the Warder as then he's likely to have multiple enemies attack him at once - but Aspect of Might is an excellent choice.

Hmm...thinking about this more, it may be that I can provide him the ability to last in combat not by increasing his defenses, but instead by giving him the ability to self heal. That way he can chose more offensive powers and feats. That would also serve to then improve his damage output relative to the Ranger.

He has no improvement to his OA, but I've not been pushing that too much either as all it would serve to do is remind him how feat-starved he is.

It seems like the care and feeding of a pursuit Avenger is a little more work than for other classes. They really do require some specific circumstances to shine (back rank caster/archers, room to manuver, not so many NPCs that they can't use OoE).

If you really want to make his avenger feel special, run away from him from time to time. Nothing like actually getting your pursuit bonus once in a while to remind you that you actually have it.

This goes along with what I'm saying about focusing on skills and role playing. Avengers are more like Rogues than Rangers. It's the mighty longbow or the two-bladed dance that is iconic about Rangers. For Rogues, it's casing the streets and disabling traps. Avengers are a lot like this, too. They don't have Thievery, but they have Streetwise and Insight as class skills, which helps them to excel in the exploration phase or in encounters that employ skill checks and challenges.

It can be difficult to do this on the board, however. How do you run away from a PC on the grid? First of all, doing so pulls the Avenger away from the rest of the group, which is okay. Avengers are loners and can handle that, if your players is into it. But if an enemy is determined to run away, it will continue to every turn and quickly leave the board.

This is what I mean when I think of an Avenger as a Batman-type figure. They excel when they have the freedom to chase a single villain across a significant distance. I love Avengers for the rooftop chase scene or the back alley stalk. On the grid I think it can be hard to really make that shine, with limited space to move and an entire group of combatants that you might want to feel like you're a part of.

I would love to post a long message about pursuit avengers since I love them and know they can dominate in combat alongside anyone, but there's a lot of "traps" in their power and feat selection. Don't have time now for that so just one thing:

An avenger can have tons of fun roll playing combat, more than any other class that I've played because they are the ones that *call that shots* for the whole party by marking targets with Oath of Enmity in combination with Divine Guidance and Loyal Sanction (lvl2 utility). It's can be so much fun RPing every use of Oath of Enmity with a real oath, a denunciation, a promise of exactly what you will do to them, or just a dramatic finishing off of one foe and them pointing your blade at another and calling out "You're next!"

Ok, very fast build needs: 1) Unarmored Agility 2) Overwhelming Strike 3) damage boosing feats 4) Aspect of Might 5) Angelic Alacrity 6) either Relentless Stride (so much fun! so much out-of-turn spotlight that I had to tone it down so as not to always be stealing the show) or Fury's Advance at lvl3, then something that does 2[w] at 7. Dump all stats but wis and dex, but that should be obvious.

The advice to actually have someone run from them is great - I used to long for such a situation, but almost never happened, since there's really no escape from a pursuit avenger, so why try. ;)